How to Protect Your Small Business Against Fraud

14 January 2021

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Opinions expressed by Businessman The contributors are their own.

As the owner of a small business, you have to perform many responsibilities to run your company efficiently. One of them is making sure that you have adequate security measures in place to protect organizational and employee data from fraudulent scams. Unfortunately, online scams are becoming increasingly widespread: by 2018, 82% of businesses have experienced a form of fraud. While these findings indicated that large enterprises were particularly at high risk, small businesses were not exempt from these attacks, which is why protecting their small business against fraud is more important than ever. Here are three steps you can follow to increase your security and keep scammers at bay.

educate yourself

Knowledge is power. With this in mind, the first step in protecting your small business against fraud is to inform yourself of what types of fraud your enterprise may target. Some of the most common small business fraud scenarios include payroll fraud, cash theft, online banking, and false invoices. It is also important that these types of plans can fall on your small business. In many ways, fraudulent activity has the potential to destroy your business. Financial losses are often significant, the level of trust of partners and customers in your organization is likely to decrease, and your company’s overall reputation may deteriorate significantly.

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Educate your employees

When it comes to defending your organization against fraud, your employees should be informed and involved in that process. Be sure to conduct regular training sessions on common security threats (both online and offline) as well as apply prevention techniques.
Ensure that all workers (both new and experienced) are well aware of the use and handling of confidential data such as company policies, financial data, employee information and client information. Failing to do so can result in costly employee knowledge. For example, if a phishing scam resembles a staff member who is not private, they will be more likely to fall for one and risk sensitive data.

Integrate a fraud management system

Ultimately, setting up an effective enterprise fraud management system is the best thing you can do to protect your small business from scams. Enterprise fraud management (EFM) refers to the real-time screening of transaction activity across multiple company users, accounts, processes and channels to ultimately identify and prevent fraud within a company.

When choosing a fraud management system for your business, there are several criteria that you should consider. See a program that will provide seamless integration, real-time analysis and results, and fit your budget.

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In an age when online scams are becoming more prevalent, defending your company’s data should be a top priority. To educate yourself and your employees about the types of fraud, as well as measures for prevention and protection, you will associate yourself with the knowledge needed to strengthen your overall security. Additionally, integrating an effective fraud management system will give you peace of mind that you know your data is safe from scammers.